This 1979 American Book Award nominee contains five interlocked stories that tell of the slave Gorgik in a long-ago land, and a masked swordswoman narrates an astonishing feminist creation myth.

Five inter-connected stories set in a mythical past focus on the experiences of the slave Gorgik and deal with aspects of the beginning of civilization. Contents: "The Tale of Gorgik" "The Tale of Old Venn" "The Tale of Small Sarg" "The Tale of Potters and Dragons" "The Tale of Dragons and Dreamers."

DIVDIVSlavery is outlawed, Nevèrÿon is free, and Gorgik the Liberator must revisit the mines for a final struggle where he himself was once a slave/divDIV Alone in a deserted castle in the Nevèrÿon countryside, a great warrior and a young barbarian meet at midnight to tell each other tales from their intersecting lives. But are they really alone? And, if they aren’t, what will it mean for Nevèrÿon . . . ?/divDIV The three stories in this volume end Samuel R. Delany’s Return to Nevèrÿon saga and cycle. But they are also its beginning—taking us back to the start of Gorgik’s epic—although, from what we’ve learned from the others, even that has become an entirely new story, though not a word in it has been changed . . ./divDIV This ebook features an illustrated biography of Samuel R. Delany including rare images from his early career./divDIV/div/div

Silent, upon a peak in Nevèrÿon. The enchanted land of Nevèrÿon is the most fascinating fantasy empire ever mapped by a modern word-enchanter - a realm of nameless terror and sensuous delights beyond the feeble imaginings of mortal men and women. Now Nevèrÿon's wildest desires and darkest dreams collide with the drear realities of our own blighted world as the gossamer boundaries between the real and the fantastic, truth and falsehood being to break down. And the world we know (or think we know) is revealed to us as if for the first time.

The story of a truly galactic civilization with over 6,000 inhabited worlds.